pulled out a small stack of papers, spreading them out on the granite-topped desk.
Grace wondered why everything in Maya’s house felt so cold all the time.
The three of them leaned in close, heads together, sifting through the papers. Grace saw Maya’s birth certificate, her parents’ names carefully typed in, and a small set of baby footprints. There was some official-looking paperwork, and then Maya reached for an envelope with a red “Return to Sender” stamp on it. “Here,” she said, handing it to Grace.
Grace’s hands were shaking as she took it. At first, she couldn’t figure out why it was so important, and then she saw it.
The address.
“Your parents sent a letter to her house?” she gasped. Her hands were shaking so bad that she had to hand it to Joaquin.
Maya just nodded.
“How . . . when did you find this? How did they even get it?”
“I was ten,” Maya said. “And I don’t know. They don’t even know that I found it.”
“Did you ever look it up? Did you write her? Did you . . .” Grace forced herself to slow down. Next to her, Joaquin looked stricken, and he kept turning the envelope over and over, as if looking for another clue, as if he was playing Detectives, too.
“No,” Maya said. “I just put it back. I used to take it out every now and then and look at it, but I just couldn’t do it. I guess,” she added after a pause, “maybe I was waiting for you two.”
Grace reached over and put her hand on Joaquin’s, stilling his movements. “Joaq,” she said, “do you want to do this?”
“Well, you—”
“No, not me. You. Do you want to do this? It’s okay if you don’t.”
“Totally, Joaquin,” Maya said. “You have . . . we know . . . fuck, I don’t know what to say.”
“No, I want to,” Joaquin said. “I want her to see me.” His voice reminded Grace of the ocean, of sand being sucked back into the sea. “It’s easier with you two.”
“Okay,” Grace said. “You’re sure?”
Joaquin nodded. “I’m sure.”
“Then I’m sure, too,” Maya said.
“I’ll drive,” Joaquin replied. “Next weekend?”
“Damn straight,” Maya said.
Grace had never thought that it could feel so good just to breathe again.
MAYA
Maya was really good at keeping secrets.
That’s probably because she had so much practice at it.
She never told anyone about the envelope in the safe, at least not until Joaquin and Grace, and she didn’t tell anyone that she was going to drive three hours to see if her biological mom was still at the address on the envelope. That secret was making her feel like something was pushing under her skin, desperate to get out.
And that made her think, of course, of Grace.
Even though she had already said sorry, she had texted Grace at least once a day since then, apologizing for stealing her phone.
Did I tell you how sorry I am? Because I am.
My, it’s fine.
I’ll buy you frozen yogurt next time.
I actually hate frozen yogurt.
Gah! I am so bad at apologizing!!!!!!
Maya still had questions, of course. She wanted to know when the baby (she couldn’t call her Peach no matter how hard she tried) had been born, if it had hurt as much as everyone says it does, if Grace had been scared before and after. She wondered if Grace would feel bad forever, if that look on her face when she had first told them about the baby would ever truly go away.
And at three a.m., when that same old insomnia crept back, Maya wondered if her mom, the one who was in rehab, missed her the same way that Grace missed her baby.
She had seen pictures of the rehab place online. It seemed nice, if a little sparse. It advertised sunshine and palm trees and recovery, but Maya thought that behind all the perks, it just looked lonely. She hated to think of her mom being lonely, or afraid, or sad, and at the same time, she was so mad at her. On the one hand, it was her mom’s own stupid fault for even being in rehab in the first place. If she really loved Maya and Lauren like she said she did, she would have stopped drinking a long time ago. She would have changed for them.
But on the other hand, Maya knew that the problem was bigger and more complicated than that, and it scared her that she didn’t know how to figure it out.
On Wednesday night at dinner (homemade meal again;